


Ire and Climate

by chemicallydefective



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Kinda, POV Second Person, Pining, Post-Reichenbach, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stream of Consciousness, The Empty Hearse Spoilers, allusions to canon PTSD, literally canon violence though, mention of nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-20 21:52:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2444450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemicallydefective/pseuds/chemicallydefective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He's overwhelmed, you can see all the old signs. He clenches his fists and nothing has changed, nothing has changed."</p><p>Sherlock's stream of consciousness during and after the near-proposal at the Landmark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ire and Climate

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags before reading, I don't think any of the archive warnings apply, but I listed others that I could think of. 
> 
> But anyway.
> 
> This one is so surreal.
> 
> It's written in the second person and I feel like I should be apologising, but I wanted to try it out and I like the weight it gave the story. Another possible reason for apology is that, while it has been beta'd, this story hasn't been brit-picked (although we use british spellings where I'm from).
> 
> Like every single one of my other stories, this idea came to me in the middle of the night and I wasn't going to get any sleep unless I got it down, but it is coherent. Don't forget to tell me what you think!

He hits you. He hits you. He hits you and you feel it. He hits you and you hate him.

He launches himself at you and he's fuming and he's dressed too nicely for his behaviour. He's not used to your old dynamic. He's forgotten the way both of you would brush a major problem aside with a joke, laugh because the only alternative would be to cry (you spent two years laughing your way through hell, and he doesn't even know). He's overwhelmed, you can see all the old signs. He clenches his fists and nothing has changed, nothing has changed. His whole life has shifted ever so slightly, filled in the infinitesimal hole you left, but nothing has changed. He still finds himself at a loss when needing to confront several emotions at once.

You're both on the floor. The tile is cool under your head and his hands are warm around your neck. He doesn't mean to choke you, he'd never end your life, he just doesn't know what to do with himself, so he's doing it all at once. His eyes glint with anger and grief, the wound still raw and torn open once again. He hates you for it.

You're all in a café and you sterilise your story of its messy romanticism, tell a tale in which you count to ten and Moriarty's network runs and hides and doesn't know John exists. John will now never know. You deserve credit in his eyes, you deserve his thanks for putting your life in danger every day just so that he could stay alive, and he deserves to know how much you would do for him, but neither of you will get any of that. He attacks you again, he keeps hating you and you don't know whether to hate him back or hate yourself.

He needs you somewhere else. He needs you back in Serbia, so that the wound can heal and he won't hurt. He needs you in climates far, far away that somehow remind you of London, where you can hear him screaming your name in the drops of the rain and an attempt on your life is the only thing reminding you that you won't return to London for a long time. He needs you somewhere barren, somewhere where the cold's love bite brands you as officially deceased in 2012. He needs you somewhere where the desert sand forces itself down your throat and you're dead anyway, it would be a lot easier to just give up and accept danger's courteously outstretched hand. He needs you somewhere exotic, somewhere slickwith viscous, counterfeit pleasure that he can ask you about in his routine of bitter dreams and sweet nightmares. He needs you to be there with him, but only in a sick way, where you would give anything to crawl out of his subconscious mind and into his arms, and where he would give anything to abandon the only 'you' that exists in his life anymore. He needs you, but only as a patch of earth he can pour his heart out to without looking back.

As the two of you fall out, London needs you to be the way you used to be, great and acerbic and above it all. London needs you to roll your eyes, scoff, and move along, but you can't, you can't go back to that, to the heavy emptiness right where you should feel pain, love, and sadness. London needs you to shrug him away like you have everyone else ever to get close to you, but he is within your very skin, and it's even more useless than the two years you were given to try and forget him.

A silence's second is heavy in the air and then he says that he only would have needed one word. The phrase is dense as it hits you on your chest and you weigh it against the look in his eyes and you want to laugh. He would have waited for you. You had a chance with the bravest and kindest and wisest human being you have ever had the good fortune of knowing, and if you think back hard enough, you can remember hearing it shatter in the eternal moment before you hit the airbag, as you were floating just centimetres above it. You spent two years on the brink of giving him that one word, but you were worried you might say something indiscreet, and you had come back just a little too late. You and John know this and drop the responsibility of fixing it between the two of you, agreeing that there's nothing to do and leaving in different directions.

You find yourself begging for him to have missed you. You plead for him to remember just as you do the feeling of running so fast neither of you are sure you're touching the ground, of laughing so hard you can't breathe. You remind him of times when it was just the two of you against the rest of the world and he doesn't know what to do with himself again. He has you by the lapels and you weren't expecting this, you hadn't arranged an appropriate response for any of his three pounces tonight. You don't know what to do with yourself either. You lie back. Craving drives his anger into you. You lie back.

You're not dead. You're not dead, and you have to promise yourself this, because you can't be sure. You're not dead, and that's what you told John earlier this evening, but the blood coming from your nose and lip tastes of finality. You're not dead, but your heart has stopped beating (or at least you've stopped feeling it do so). You're not dead, but your nerves have given up, surrendered and stopped feeling.

John is somewhere else, continuing with his fuming, and Mary promises to talk him around. You think to yourself that it could have gone worse. Nothing is the way you want it to be in your own life, but that doesn't really matter. John will be happy once again when he gets past this mess you've created for him. He and Mary are going to get engaged and you're going to be very happy for them. You might get to sit on the groom's side of the ceremony and smile as he vows himself away to someone who isn't you. You could sit at a table somewhere near the front, uncomfortable as Mike Stamford cracks jokes about John during his best man speech. John and Mary will be happy. There isn't going to be any danger in John's life, not with Mary. She's going to love him and he is going to love her and you are going to fade into a vignette. The happy couple will be free from the likes of high-functioning sociopaths and murderers.

Mary joins John in the cab he called and you promise yourself once more that you're not dead.

He hit you. He hit you. He hit you and you stopped feeling it. He hit you and you love him.


End file.
